Endless Thread

By WBUR

Technology

What's Endless Thread about?

Hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson dig into the internet's vast and curious ecosystem of online communities to find untold histories, unsolved mysteries, and other jaw-dropping stories online and IRL.

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LAST EPISODE

Jokes, Part II: Stand Up

08.12.2022

The first documented bar joke was copied onto a clay tablet 4,000 years ago in the ancient language of Sumerian. Scholars have translated it, but the meaning remains lost. After the Twitter account @DepthsOfWiki posted the joke in March, thousands ...

Endless Thread episodes:

08.12.2022 Jokes, Part II: Stand Up The first documented bar joke was copied onto a clay tablet 4,000 years ago in the ancient language of Sumerian. Scholars have translated it, but the meaning remains lost. After the Twitter account @DepthsOfWiki posted the joke in March, thousands ...
08.05.2022 Jokes, Part I: Sumer Funny, Sumer Not What makes the world’s first documented bar joke funny? No one knows. In a tweet that garnered thousands of responses in March, the Twitter account @DepthsOfWiki posted about a 4,000-year-old proverb written on a clay tablet. The line, which experts ...
07.29.2022 Alyssa When a Reddit post about constant “locker room talk” in a male-dominated office gained traction in the r/TwoXChromosomes subreddit, Ben and Amory invite the OP to talk about the story behind her post. ****** Credits: This episode was written and ...
07.22.2022 Eggs Tyrone and The United States Chemical Safety Board's YouTube Channel Ben is joined by producer Quincy Walters in this Snacktime episode about little-known government agency with a cult YouTube following and the music mish-mash account that brought Ben back to Instagram after a 3-year hiatus. ****** Credits: This episode was ...
07.15.2022 Swedengate When a Redditor said that he was expected to stay in his Swedish friend's bedroom while the friend ate dinner with his family, the internet exploded with hot takes. Is Sweden the most inhospitable country in the world? We talk ...
07.08.2022 Encore: Tight Squeeze You might not think about caves in the same breath as you do the deep ocean or outer space, but you probably should. There are approximately 70,000 caves in the United States alone, but the vast majority are inaccessible to ...
07.01.2022 Aunties Reddit's Auntie Network, an online community "dedicated to providing information and resources to those in need of abortion services," has been inundated with new members since the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked in early May. ...
06.24.2022 The Loudest Sound Imagine if an explosion in California was so loud that it could be heard in New York City. This is the story of a real event that was just as loud — the loudest sound ever recorded in human history. ...
06.17.2022 Encore: Giddyup! Riding Groups Tap Into Long History Of Black Cowboys In the summer of 2020, images of Black men and women riding horses at protests went viral. But the history of Black cowboys goes all the way back to the creation of the American West. In this encore episode, the ...
06.10.2022 Lost in Translation From a seriously violent tale on Duolingo to a Reddit post about a life-changing mistake, we bring you two stories on the pitfalls of jumping to conclusions. (Grace Tatter, an Endless Thread producer, is filling in for Ben Brock Johnson ...
06.03.2022 TikTok Tics When Ben hears a rumor about kids "catching" tics from watching too many TikTok videos, we set out to investigate. We hear from neurologists and TikTok influencers to get to the bottom of this so-called "medical mystery". ****** Credits: This ...
05.27.2022 'He Died in the Goddamn Waiting Room' With unprecedented hospital staff shortages, COVID-19 has upended the nursing profession. But the r/nursing subreddit offers an online life raft for many in the industry — a place where nurses can speak freely and anonymously about their experiences and the ...
05.20.2022 When Online Extremism Becomes Offline Violence On Endless Thread, we talk about the blurring lines between our online and offline worlds. This week, we discuss the role online platforms played in the mass shooting on May 14, 2022, in Buffalo, New York. We also ask experts ...
05.13.2022 Cyberwitches Since the dawn of the internet, cyberwitches have traded in their broomsticks and cauldrons for floppy disks and smartphones. This week on Endless Thread, we go into the history of cyberwitches, attend a Zoom ritual, and talk to members of ...
05.06.2022 Us vs. Them vs. Andy From a young age, "Andy" wanted to be a police officer. But in 2021, after 15 years on the job, he quit. Andy wrote about his decision in the r/OffMyChest community on Reddit — a choice that left him "half-heartbroken ...
04.29.2022 Egg-cellent If True When a colleague sent us a viral Reddit post from WallStreetBets, we set out to investigate. A redditor who goes by u/throwmetfawaythanks tricked thousands into thinking he cashed in on Fresh Hen Egg Futures, and awaiting delivery on one million ...
04.22.2022 The Faker Sixteen-year-old M.H. was excited for another year on her cheerleading squad in suburban Pennsylvania. But the year was cut short when an anonymous number texted a video of her vaping to her parents and the cheerleading coaches. Vaping was against ...
04.15.2022 There's a r/place for us After its first successful iteration in 2017, r/place returned on April 1, 2022 for four days of battling fandoms vying for space inside a pixelated canvas. We talk to two Redditors who recount the challenges of claiming their stake in ...
04.08.2022 The Herman Cain Award A deep dive into The Herman Cain Award subreddit, which ironically awards those who die from COVID after publicly expressing anti-vaxx sentiments or pandemic-denying memes online. We meet a moderator and a Herman Cain Award nominee, who may have more ...
04.01.2022 Excrement of the Stars Thousands of years ago, a massive meteoroid seared through the Earth’s atmosphere and split into fragments over Greenland. Its pieces were later used for toolmaking by the Inughuit that inhabited northwestern Greenland. In other words: Inughuit people used space knives. ...
03.25.2022 Political feuds don't take vacations Ben and Amory are, sadly, not the type of people who truly "unplug" when they go on vacation, but this week's story is proof that those people do, in fact, exist! It comes to us from "Shared State" — a ...
03.18.2022 Goblins, Toenails, and Beach Rap In times like these, you've got to take joy wherever and however you can get it. Amory and Ben swap unexpected sources of joy they've bumped into recently — from a goblin-themed Reddit post, to the scariest toe talons on ...
03.11.2022 Ballerina in the Sky This is the story of a shocking event that sent Endless Thread producer Quincy Walters, and countless others, down a disturbing and fascinating rabbit hole about a small, daring group of people called wing walkers and a woman who wanted ...
03.04.2022 Eugene from Ukraine "How to prepare your house for an active wartime?" This was the title of a post on r/NoStupidQuestions about a month ago. The Reddit user, a 32-year old Ukrainian name Eugene, asked other users for advice in case Russia invaded. ...
02.25.2022 Dogs in Elk "I know how to take meat away from a dog. How do I take a dog away from meat?" This was a real question posed in Salon.com's Table Talk forum in 1999. What ensued from there played out like, well, ...
02.18.2022 Space Heist! (Or, How to Steal a Planet) On December 28, 2004, CalTech astronomer Mike Brown and his colleagues found an unnamed dwarf planet drifting through the far reaches of the solar system. But before they could go public with their finding — as they were dotting their ...
02.11.2022 Li Ziqi: China's Quarantine Queen While you were tending to your quarantine sourdough starter, Chinese YouTube star Li Ziqi was growing mushrooms, making peach blossom crowns and listening to the sound of blooming roses. Join Amory and Ben as they explore Li Ziqi, and why ...
02.03.2022 Murph Jack Murphy, or "Murph the Surf," is best known for pulling off the biggest jewel heist in New York City history. But Amory's here to tell you about his more sinister past, and to question why we allow powerful figures ...
01.28.2022 The complicated, chaotic rise of 'antiwork' "Unemployment for all, not just the rich!" That's the catchphrase of r/antiwork, a Reddit community of more than 1.7 million people who want to end work as we know it and reimagine its role in our lives. In this episode, ...
01.20.2022 Tales of the Tailed Heads up: This episode mentions the tragic death of a dog. Take care when listening, and hug your furry loved ones. Amory, Ben, and producer Quincy explore three stories, in which a man's furry best friend is shot by a ...
01.14.2022 The internet's fight over dinosaur emoji Emoji might not be 66 million years old, but they are pretty much everywhere. Join Ben and Amory as they explore the history of dinosaur emoji in LGBTQ+ communities and their more recent use as an online dog-whistle for anti-trans ...
01.06.2022 Encore: To the Max (Headroom) On November 22nd, 1987, two TV stations in Chicago had their broadcast signals hijacked by someone wearing a Max Headroom mask. In the years since, Redditors have played an integral role in getting to the bottom of this case. Who ...
12.21.2021 Encore: Today You, Tomorrow Me 10 years ago, Justin found himself on the side of the road with a blown out tire. Hours went by and no one stopped to help. But just as he was about to give up, something happened that changed Justin ...
12.21.2021 Encore: Three Autistic Redditors on Autism Three autistic Redditors talk to us about their view of the world, their view of autism, and their hopes for greater representation in society.
12.16.2021 MEMES, Bonus: The Chorus Amory and Ben team up with NPR to take on Twitter Spaces. This bonus episode is a recording of ET's 11/30 livestream chat with meme experts Kenyatta Cheese (Know Your Meme), "meme librarian" Amanda Brennan and Garbage Day newsletter author ...
12.09.2021 MEMES, Part 11: I've Heard This Before In this episode, we cross-examine memes and their relevance, and look at a surprising hypothesis that draws a through-line from TikTok to much farther back in history –- all the way to the very beginning of human culture. Ultimately, we ...
12.07.2021 MEMES, Bonus: Overly Attached Girlfriend Unlike some of the other everyday-people-turned-memes featured in this series, Laina Morris leaned in big-time when her parody entry in a Justin Bieber fan contest turned into the epic meme Overly Attached Girlfriend in 2012. The screenshot from the video ...
12.02.2021 MEMES, Part 10: Makmende We know that there have been meme wars in America, and that Donald Trump has been called the “first president meme’d into office.” But in Kenya—a country where one of the only feasible forms of political expression is memes, and ...
11.24.2021 MEMES, Bonus: The yearbook photo For being the internet's poster boy for bad luck, Kyle Craven thinks he sure got lucky. In this bonus episode of our meme series, Ben and Amory chat with Craven, better known as the face of the Bad Luck Brian ...
11.18.2021 MEMES, Part 9: I'm Not Done Yet Anybody old enough to remember life before cutting the cord has probably seen the work of TV pitchman Billy Mays. But people much younger still know his face and squeaky OxiClean personality. While Mays died years ago, he’s lived on ...
11.10.2021 MEMES, Part 8: The Scream If you typed “inauguration” into your web browser anytime between 2017 and 2020, you likely saw, near the top of your search results, an image of a person in a neon green jacket, black winter hat and glasses screaming “Nooooooooooo!” ...
11.04.2021 MEMES, Part 7: Dead Giveaway In 2013, four white musicians turned a local TV news clip featuring a Black man named Charles Ramsey into a song and uploaded it to YouTube. The auto-tuned meme, titled "Dead Giveaway," gained tens of millions of views virtually overnight. ...
10.29.2021 Hallomeme Bonus: Slender Man When two 12 year-old girls attacked their friend in the woods of Waukesha, Wisconsin in May of 2014, they claimed to have done it to please Slender Man -- a fictional monster created by Eric Knudsen, A.K.A. "Victor Surge," on ...
10.28.2021 MEMES, Pt. 6: Call me... The Punisher The Punisher has always been a complicated Marvel antihero: a man whose creator imagined him as a reaction to the failures of government at home and in the Vietnam War. So why is the Punisher’s trademark dripping skull insignia — ...
10.21.2021 MEMES, Pt. 5: The President of Kekistan He is known by several names, but Gordon Hurd is the one this man-turned-meme adopted when he fled Cameroon for the UK more than two decades ago. Gordon eventually found the app Fiverr and started making videos for anonymous benefactors ...
10.18.2021 MEMES, Bonus: Zoë Didn't Start the Fire Most of us hate the photos our parents take of us. But what happens when one goes viral? Zoë Roth was 4 years old when her dad took a photo of her smiling mischievously in front of a burning house. ...
10.14.2021 MEMES, Pt. 4: Woman Yelling at a Cat Humor is a key ingredient of any unit of culture that morphs and spreads over time. But humor isn’t always there at the beginning. For “Real Housewife” Taylor Armstrong, the meme that made her even more famous on the internet ...
10.12.2021 MEMES, Bonus: A Billion Ricks Last week, we explored the origin of the “Rick Roll,” a meme that evolved from Rick Astley’s 1987 hit song, “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Since the music video resurfaced as the meme in 2007, the internet has also never ...
10.08.2021 MEMES, Pt. 3: Gotta Make You Understand Who gets credit for starting a meme? Usually... nobody -- they're made too quickly and organically. In the case of one of the most famous bait-and-switch memes of all time, the "Rick Roll," we may be looking at something experts ...
09.30.2021 MEMES, Pt. 2: Scumbag Steve If there is an OG meme in which a human is the star, Scumbag Steve is it. He spread across the internet like wildfire in 2011 as a universal representation of dudes who are the worst. And, like any person ...

Older episodes

Endless Thread

What's Endless Thread about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Endless Thread episodes:

Jokes, Part II: Stand Up

Jokes, Part I: Sumer Funny, Sumer Not

Alyssa

Eggs Tyrone and The United States Chemical Safety Board's YouTube Channel

Swedengate

Encore: Tight Squeeze

Aunties

The Loudest Sound

Encore: Giddyup! Riding Groups Tap Into Long History Of Black Cowboys

Lost in Translation

TikTok Tics

'He Died in the Goddamn Waiting Room'

When Online Extremism Becomes Offline Violence

Cyberwitches

Us vs. Them vs. Andy

Egg-cellent If True

The Faker

There's a r/place for us

The Herman Cain Award

Excrement of the Stars

Political feuds don't take vacations

Goblins, Toenails, and Beach Rap

Ballerina in the Sky

Eugene from Ukraine

Dogs in Elk

Space Heist! (Or, How to Steal a Planet)

Li Ziqi: China's Quarantine Queen

Murph

The complicated, chaotic rise of 'antiwork'

Tales of the Tailed

The internet's fight over dinosaur emoji

Encore: To the Max (Headroom)

Encore: Today You, Tomorrow Me

Encore: Three Autistic Redditors on Autism

MEMES, Bonus: The Chorus

MEMES, Part 11: I've Heard This Before

MEMES, Bonus: Overly Attached Girlfriend

MEMES, Part 10: Makmende

MEMES, Bonus: The yearbook photo

MEMES, Part 9: I'm Not Done Yet

MEMES, Part 8: The Scream

MEMES, Part 7: Dead Giveaway

Hallomeme Bonus: Slender Man

MEMES, Pt. 6: Call me... The Punisher

MEMES, Pt. 5: The President of Kekistan

MEMES, Bonus: Zoë Didn't Start the Fire

MEMES, Pt. 4: Woman Yelling at a Cat

MEMES, Bonus: A Billion Ricks

MEMES, Pt. 3: Gotta Make You Understand

MEMES, Pt. 2: Scumbag Steve

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